A place to discuss the meeting of theory and practice on evolving virtual communities. By Aldo de Moor (you should follow me on twitter here)

The Value of Values

It's been a while since my last post, one reason being that I made my way to the US for an extended research visit. I am currently in New York, the city that never sleeps (as indicated by there being about five 24-hour stores in a 100 metre-radius of my appartment). Yesterday, I attended an interesting seminar on social and ethical implications of computing, hosted by Microsoft Research, in which the key speakers were Helen Nissenbaum and Jonathan Grudin. Their main theme was the role of values, such as privacy, autonomy and democracy in information technology and systems design. They explained how easily seemingly neutral technologies become biased. One way of preventing such bias is by making the values that are to be promoted by the technology explicit, and give them due consideration in the design process.

The talk triggered some deep questions. My own focus on virtual communities is the role that norms play in defining acceptable operational and evolutionary community behaviour. Norms are self-defined rules and conventions on which consensus has been reached by the community. Values and norms are closely related. Helen sees values as getting filtered through a context into norms. This seems to be a good starting point for analysis. Many questions need to be addressed, however, to further explore this relationship. What are the characteristics of this mediating context? Are specific types of values related to particular sets of norms? Are values the main source of norms, or just one of many factors to be analyzed simultaneously? Vice versa, how do the norms governing a particular community operate as filters on the values important to that community? Much more can and needs to be said about this important determinant of virtual communities. To be continued.

Comments

Aldo,

You noted that one of the "starting points for analysis" that seemed promising for the furtherance of collaborative communities was that of interpreting "values as getting filtered through a context into norms."

I liked your questions which springboarded from that position. Allow me to make some very brief comments regarding them.

You asked: "What are the characterstics of this mediating context? And what are they mediating between? "

If "values as getting filtered through a context into norms," what is the nature of this context and its relations--is it the individual within culture, the individual and nature (or history), semiosis as the process of the growth of signs, evolutionary relations and consequent developments/devolutions, our relationship to technology as it impacts our social and physical environment, etc? What exactly is this contextual relationship that we are considering?

Then you asked: "Are specific types of values related to particular sets of norms?

From the Peircean/Engelbartian position I take, the answer would have to be, yes, in the sense that esthetics (values) and ethics (particular sets of norms) are opposite sides of the same coin.

Most importantly, in Peircean pragmaticism the summum bonum, the highest human value, ought be one which all of us contributes to formulating,and so which we can come to accept as "reasonable in itself"--this possible value would overarch all other lesser values, I would think.

You query: "Are values the main source of norms, or just one of many factors to be analyzed simultaneously?" I would say that as things stand, they are "just one of many factors to be analyzed simultaneously?" But again, the summum bonum ought to be a value we all hold to be necessary and sufficient for the establishing of ethical (and, therefore, logical) norms of action. We can have confidence in it because we formulated (or discovered) it together.

Finally you asked: "Vice versa, how do the norms governing a particular community operate as filters on the values important to that community?"

Again, a Peircean perspective would have us determine FIRST a value which was good aesthetically, so ethically, so logically. This is, naturally, a matter of discerning what is "good" in each of these realms.

Once norms are established sub species summa bonum, there would seem to have to follow a natural tendency towards the growth of the values important to the evolution of the community, as well as the fuller growth towards patterns of behavior leading to communal accomplishment.

I can only agree with your conclusion. "Much more can and needs to be said about this important determinant of virtual communities."

Thanks, Gary, for your detailed explanation of how Peircean pragmaticism as a philosophy can be helpful in clarifying the multiple, dynamic, _and complex_ relationships between norms and values. I am intrigued by the following of your remarks:

"Most importantly, in Peircean pragmaticism the summum bonum, the highest human value, ought be one which all of us contributes to formulating,and so which we can come to accept as "reasonable in itself"--this possible value would overarch all other lesser values, I would think."

and

"Once norms are established sub species summa bonum, there would seem to have to follow a natural tendency towards the growth of the values important to the evolution of the community, as well as the fuller growth towards patterns of behavior leading to communal accomplishment."

If I understand you correctly, your starting point is the summum bonum, the highest human value, and all else follows from that. But isn't it the other way around? Don't we start with the messy, conflicting values of everyday life and - maybe - slowly arrive at better, more universal, more humanistic norms?

You wrote: "If I understand you correctly, your starting point is the summum bonum, the highest human value, and all else follows from that. But isn't it the other way around? Don't we start with the messy, conflicting values of everyday life and - maybe - slowly arrive at better, more universal, more humanistic norms?"

My short answer would be: It doesn't seem to me that this "slowly" (meanderingly really) has over the millenia brought us very much closer to these "better, more universal, more humanistic norms." But then it isn't really an either/or situation as I see it.

Perhaps one could say, on the one hand, that we ought certainly be better able to avoid the "unreasonable in itself"--the sort of policies and practices which Al Gore passionately accused the Bush administration of following in his address at New York University today. So if we can't exactly avoid unreason, etc., at least we can critique it (and the inhumane, etc.)

On the other hand, new internet technologies offer a growing promise of even adversarial relationships moving towards greater reasonableness and respect through mediated dialogues, etc. (consider, for example, your own GRASS project).

Books

Tim Guest: Second LivesA fascinating collection of stories of the author visiting people who really live in Second Life and other virtual worlds. The book avoids technical how-to or talk evangelical hallelujah gospel. Instead, it gives a balanced view of both the amazing potential and dangerous pitffals of virtual worlds.